150 Years of The Wheaton Record

/ Emily Banas

In November 1875, the Literary Union of Wheaton College published the first issue of the College Record, Wheaton’s student newspaper. Over the next 150 years, the Record became both a laboratory for student writing and journalism and a living chronicle of campus life. Its pages have documented student activities, campus developments, educational changes, social movements and conflicts, political campaigns, visiting speakers, chapels and mission work, theological debates, faculty projects, and countless other moments that trace the evolving history of Wheaton College.

Wheaton Archives & Special Collections holds only scattered records for the first twenty years of the paper’s publication. Among these, the earliest surviving issue of the Record dates from June 1876. Although the inaugural issue of the Record is lost to history, the June 1876 editorial provides a helpful update on the paper’s first eight months, including plans for an enlargement of the paper from eight to sixteen pages. To fill this new space, the editors appealed directly to the student body, urging Wheaton students to contribute writing:

Students write for your paper. Don’t say you haven’t time to write because you are so pressed with your studies, but take a few moments each day to write and you will soon find you are the gainer by it. Of what value will your education be to you unless you learn to apply what you learn? It may, indeed, be some satisfaction to you to know that you have a college education, but certainly it will be of very little benefit to others if you know not how to use it. And in our opinion, there is no better way of putting to practical use the knowledge we have gained than by writing.

Let us, then, improve the opportunities given to us, and thus be enabled to benefit ourselves and our fellows. A college paper furnishes one of the means of improvement, and it is to be hoped that the students in future will improve the advantages thus offered to them more than they have in the past.

Although the focus on student writing and professional experience has remained central to the paper, the Record’s form, leadership, and subject matter have evolved significantly over its history.

Under the editorial direction of the Literary Union, the collaborative co-ed board of Wheaton’s Literary Societies, the early editions of the Record were more akin to a literary magazine than a modern college newspaper. Printed monthly and available for 10¢, the issues featured essays and poetry offerings, as well as brief life updates from alumni and personal news from students or faculty. Columns with fanciful titles like “The Scissor,” “Our Spectacles,” “Campus Chit-Chat,” and “Diversions” recorded on-dits, jokes, and other news from across classes, chapels, lectures, and dormitories.

Campus Chit-Chat and Et Cetera columns from the College Record, October 1878.

Operating independently with no financial support from the administration, the College Record struggled to raise consistent funds. While some money came in from the $1 yearly subscription fee and advertising revenue, issues from the first ten years of the paper featured a continual appeal for additional support from alumni.

Around 1885, likely due to lack of funds, the Literary Union ceased publication and the College Record was repurposed by President Charles Blanchard in 1890 as the Wheaton College Record. While poetry, essays, and other pieces from students were still featured, the overall focus shifted to news and advertisements from the College administration, along with faculty and alumni updates.

Despite the Wheaton College Record‘s inclusion of student writing, the desire for a student-run paper remained. In the fall of 1900, after a semester of petitions from students, the Record was handed back to an all-student board of editors. However, as the official publisher, final business and publication oversight remained with the College administration.

Through the early 1900s, issues largely maintained the literary format of the earliest College Record, with the addition of a new section for Wheaton Athletics. In 1919, the Record introduced a three-column layout and then, a year later, transitioned to a full-size newspaper with four columns and bolded headlines. Starting in the late 1910s, the essays, sermons, poetry, and quotation collections gradually gave way to news articles, editorials, opinion pieces, advice columns, and other features of the modern college newspaper. By the 1930s, when the Associated College Press introduced its evaluation program, the Record repeatedly received the ACP’s highest “All-American” rating, recognizing the excellence of Wheaton’s student journalism. The following selected issues illustrate some of the significant developments in the Record’s long and evolving history:

November 1920: The Record moves to a more traditional news format with larger pages and columns. Bold headline for Harding’s election also shows growing engagement with national and international news.
March 1930: The Record introduces a student opinion column, writing “The Record is a student newspaper, not a closed book where a few privileged persons attempt to cram their opinions down the throat of Wheaton students.”
September 1947: Editorial cartoon from David Dresser ’48. Cartoons first regularly appeared in the Record in the 1930s, initially from syndicated sources and later from Wheaton students.
October 1954: Photographs illustrate campus happenings alongside articles. Photography first appeared in a limited capacity in the Record during the mid 1920s. Use of photojournalism as a regular feature became more prominent through the 1940s and 1950s.
April 1971: Joke issue of the Wheaton Record for April Fools Day. Yearly humor issues were regularly printed in the 1940s and 1950s as the “Freshman Record” and in the 1980s and 1990s as “Off the Record.”
February 1988: Art section of the paper with reviews of comic series and new album. The Record had covered on-campus concerts and artistic events since its beginning, but the 1970s and 1980s saw increased engagement with the Chicago art and music scene, as well as the wider world of movies and pop-culture.
August 2008: The Record turns technicolor! First regular color printing appears in the mid-2000s, although until the 2010s it was often limited to the front page of the paper.

As a critical source for the history of student activities and culture, campus events, faculty projects, and many other College developments, the Record is one of the most frequently used items in the College Archives. However, its size and materiality offer special challenges for use and preservation. Due to the physical composition of newsprint, often made with cheap unpurified wood pulp, newspapers are especially prone to instability and decay over time. Without intervention, they can become so brittle that any use results in breakage. The traditional large-size format of newspapers also contributes to their increased susceptibility to tearing and creates difficulties for obtaining high quality scans or copies.

To better preserve this indispensable resource, the Archives is currently working on digitizing all 150 years of the Record. Using a new large-format document scanner acquired in late 2024 through a generous donation to the Archives, Archival clerk Kaitlyn Liebelt (MA ’26) spent the summer and fall meticulously scanning the first thirty years of the Record.

Archival clerk Kaitlyn Liebelt scans a 1904 issue of the Wheaton Record. Over the last year, Kaitlyn has also completed a full inventory of all the issues of the Record held by the Archives, as well as begun work on an update of the Record’s article index.

Over the next year, the Archives will continue to scan the Record and plans to make the digital issues available soon to students, alumni, faculty, and other researchers. The complete print run of The Wheaton Record remains available for in-person review in the Manuscripts Reading Room in Billy Graham Hall.

Leave a comment